Pathspace: The Space of Paths (54 page)

Jon grumbled a bit, but he
rummaged a bit on his odds and ends barrel and came up with a piece
about a foot and a half long. Lester accepted it and held it in
front of him, willing himself to relax and open his mind to
pathspace.

As he closed his eyes
reached out to sculpt the space around and in the pipe, he became
aware of a peculiar sensation. It was a kind of echo, almost as if
there two pieces of pipe he was working on, except one of them was
about twenty feet away. Startled, he opened his eyes for a moment
and lost his concentration. When he returned to his task he felt it
again, that echo, but this time it was closer.

At this, he nearly dropped
the pipe, but he forced himself to hang onto it and finish what he
was doing. In a few moments it felt right. Reaching forward, he
slipped the loop of rope off the bottom handle of the bellows and
pulled it from the hole in the side of the forge. Before Jon could
say anything, he shoved the end of the short length of pipe
in.

“
I don't see how a longer nozzle will
be any better,” Jon muttered. “And you'll still need leather and a
couple of poles for handles to make a bigger bellows.”

“
No I won't. Watch.” Lester stroked
the other end of the pipe, moving a finger along it toward the
forge.

The was a faint hissing of
indrawn air and the coals in the forge blazed brighter. He let Jon
stare at it for a moment before he stroked the pipe back the other
way, turning it off again. “You don't need to pump a bellows
anymore, Jon. Now you have a swizzle. Much easier.”

Jon took his eyes off the
swizzle. Now he was staring at Lester. “How did you do
that?”

Was that respect in his eyes...or fear?
“Something the court wizard up
in Denver taught me,” he explained. “I'm his new apprentice.” He
paused to wipe his own brow. “Well, isn't that worth a few feet of
pipe?”

The smith rubbed his chin.
He was about to answer when the sound of boots crunching on snow
made them both turn.

Carolyn stood framed in
the doorway. Lester swallowed. How had he forgotten how beautiful
she was? He shut his eyes for a moment. Yes, sure enough, the echo
was only a few feet away now. It was her. Well, well!

“
Are you going to be much longer?” she
asked her father. Then Lester saw recognition in her eyes. “Lester?
It is you, isn't it? Almost didn't recognize you in that robe.
Where have you been?”

“
Apprenticing with Xander, up in
Denver. How've you been? Still going out with Burton?”

“
Not really,” she said. “Not for a
couple of months. That's a story for another time. Who's
Xander?”

“
Set the table,” Jon told her. “I'll
be in to join you in a minute.” He turned to Lester. “How much did
you say you needed? A dozen feet, was it?”

“
Yes. If you don't have it on hand I
guess I could always come back later.”

“
Let me go check the shed.” He hurried
off to look.

Lester suppressed a smile and shook his head.
In a hurry to get
rid of me, aren't you?
Oh, he wanted the swizzle all right, but that
didn't mean he wanted Lester hanging around his
daughter.

Carolyn laughed. She
hadn't budged. “Should I set an extra place?”

He grinned. “Thanks, but
no. I just got home, and my mom would pitch a fit if I ducked out
of dinner the first night back. But I do want to speak with you
tomorrow, if you've time.”

Jon came back in with two
pipes. “These are six foot lengths. I suppose you'll need them
joined.”

“
Yep. Sorry, I should have mentioned
that.”

“
No trouble, no trouble at all,” said
Jon, setting the pipes against the wall and reaching his tools. He
eyed Lester. “Anything else you need before I close up for
dinner?”

Lester thought. “Actually,
there is. Can you put a slight bend on one end?”

Kareef:
Troubling Doubts

لذلك، إذا انت في شك حول ما أنزلنا اليك، نسأل أولئك الذين
تتلون الكتاب من قبلك
.
لقد
حان الحقيقة اليك من ربك
.
فلا تكن من الممترين

“So, if thou art in doubt
regarding what We have sent down to thee, ask those who recite the
Book before thee. The truth has come to thee from thy Lord; so be
not of the doubters”

–
Quran 10:94

The other students had
filed out of the
madresah
, but Kareef did not follow
them from the school. Nizar, his teacher, had asked him to stay,
and so he stayed.

Even now, as he sat on a
cushion trying to quiet his mind, he could hear the approaching
footsteps of the
Mullah
. He opened his eyes and waited for the elder to
speak.

“
Kareef, I sensed today
that you are having more disquieting thoughts. Is this
true?”

“
Na-am.”
Yes
. “I feel like a boat
adrift on unfamiliar waters. I wonder what certainties I can cling
to.”

Nizar seated himself across from him.
“Kareef, what are the five pillars of Islam?”

Kareef almost laughed. He knew that would
have been disrespectful, but did Nizar really think that reciting
the trained responses would bring him any nearer to certainty?

But he had been asked, so
he would answer. “The five pillars are the
Shahadah
, the
Salat
, the
Zakat
, the
Sawm
, and the
Hajj
. The Declaration of one God,
the five-times-daily prayers, the giving to the poor, the fasting
in Ramadan, and the Pilgrimage.”

“
And do you have doubts,
questions, or disquieting thoughts about these?”

“
Yes I do. To begin with,
how can any of us undertake the
Hajj
? Ever since the Fall, we have
lost contact with other continents. We cannot
walk
to Mecca, so what meaning does
the
Hajj
still
have for us, if any?”

Nizar regarded him from
under graying bushy eyebrows for a moment, stroking his beard. “Do
you think that is the only possible meaning of the
Hajj
?

Kareef shifted on his cushion, suddenly
uncomfortable. He didn't feel turning his doubts into an excuse for
another lecture. “What do you think?”

Nizar raised an eyebrow. “You could think of
it as a spiritual quest. Forgive me for saying so, but I am sure
Allah knows what we can and cannot do. He knows of the storms that
raged when the weather satellites failed, and how the failure of
the old technologies ended sea voyages.”

“
Then why should He expect
the
Hajj
? Or do
we maintain the thought of it out of mere tradition?

“
Has it occurred to you,”
Nizar said, upon reflection, “that perhaps you could go on
Hajj
without crossing
the ocean?

Kareef tried not to frown. “Is this a
riddle?”

Nizar smiled. “No. From our book we know
something of other societies, and in many other cultures there is
the tradition of a spiritual quest. On the far continent of
Australia, for example, the indigents call it 'going on
Walkabout'.

Kareef absorbed this. “And
you think this it is some kind of universal coming-of-age thing? Is
that why we still include the
Hajj
in the Five Pillars? To imitate other
societies?”

Nizar grew serious. “No, of course not. I
was merely pointing out a parallel.”

“
And what about the
Zakat
, the giving of
savings to the poor and needy? Am I, a poor student, supposed to
give money I do not have? Or merely to feel guilty that I
cannot?”

“
Allah knows who can give
and who cannot.”

And the
Sawm
, the fasting and
self-control during Ramadan. The rest of the year it doesn't really
apply, does it? To me, it appears that my own Islam rests on only
two pillars, the Declaration and the Prayers. Is that enough? Even
a chair or table needs at least three legs.”

“
These doubts you are
having,” said Nizar, “do you think you are the first to think of
them? They are a natural part of growing up in the world. Time and
experience will answer them.”

“
But there's more,” Kareef
said. “In my younger years when I learned of our country, it
appeared that it had always existed. But that's not true, is it?
From the books in the Library I have learned that the first
settlers of this land from outside were
not
Muslim. Yet here we are. How did
we come to be here, and why was the subject glossed over in our
younger classes?”

Now it was Nizar who shifted on his cushion.
“It is true, what you say. The founding of the Emirates was not so
long ago. But the details of it would disturb the young, and so we
do not cover that until students are older. It is covered in the
final year before graduation.”

“
But why? What details?”
An uncomfortable thought occurred to him. “Is it because of
bloodshed? Our history studies covered wars in the past. What's one
more?”

Nizar sighed. “I would rather wait until it
was time to cover these things in class,” he said. “But since you
are asking, I shall not hold back. The time of the Founding was a
bloody one. The Faithful were not the first group to come to this
continent, but come we did. When the Gifts of the Tourists failed
and civilization fell, we were already here.”

“
But surely we were few
among many.”

“
Yes,” said Nizar. “but in
the unrest after nations fell, there were many such groups in
America. Some were absorbed, but some were not. The great Melting
Pot of America did not always melt us all together, once national
unity was lost.”

“
That much is obvious from
geography,” said Kareef. “But it does not explain how we hold so
much territory, yet not all. Why have we not conquered the entire
land from sea to sea? Does Allah no longer favor our warriors? Or
have we grown complacent?”

Nizar leaned back on his cushion. “There
have been times, in our past,” he admitted, when Islam was an
Empire that covered much of the known world.”

“
You mean, back before the
spread of Christianity.”

“
Yes. I think you will
find, if you look further into the books of the Library, that many
religions go through a period of missionary zeal, a period in which
it seems that followers are obligated to spread their faith by any
means. Islam was no exception.”

“
Are you saying that we
have decided the lessons of the past were wrong, and have settled
down to become comfortable neighbors?”

Nizar eyed him. “I am saying,” he said,
finally, “that a mind is like a bag – it can only be filled when it
is open. As we grow in wisdom, we see that Allah does not need us
to be barbarian conquerors. There is evil to resist in the world,
it cannot be denied. But the greater struggle is always within us.
What is the point of seeking to convert strangers if we do not rule
our own thoughts? And then there is the matter of tolerance. Before
the coming of the extremists, Islam was known as a religion of
tolerance.”

Kareef frowned at this. “But aren't we too
tolerant? We have Christians within our borders. If they came to
outnumber the Faithful, would they not seek to change our
government and way of life? Should they not be required to be as we
are?”

“
That is not tolerance,”
said the
Mullah
.
“It would set a bad example, and make trade with other countries
difficult. How can we be less accepting than those of the North?
Have we smaller hearts than them?”

“
The people of New
Israel?” Kareef was taken aback. “Are you saying we should
imitate
them
?”

Nizar nodded. “I am. Their government has
elements of religion in it, and yet those descendants of Jacob have
many Christians and even Muslims among them. They do not feel their
faith is weakened by tolerance, or by the presence of differing
faiths and opinions. And yet they are a people who have suffered
many persecutions. In ages past, many Jews were killed by
Christians and by Muslims. If they can see past ancient conflicts
and open their country to all, can we do any less?”

Here Kareef pursed his lips. “Perhaps they
are not so much open-minded as more geographically fortunate. The
area of the Desolation between them and the Emirates has the effect
of limiting their visitors more than it does ours.”

Nizar shook his head. “Do you truly think
they are fortunate to have less farmland than us? “

“
They have more mines,”
Kareef muttered.

“
Yes but you cannot eat
ore, can you? Our population has expanded more rapidly than theirs,
and the Desolation is only one reason fir it. We simply can support
more people than they can.” He paused. “It was different, back in
the times of the Ancients. Back then the cities of the North had
millions of citizens.”